


i believe in miracles, since you came along

by secretsarenotforfree



Series: Caskett Appreciation Week 2020 [1]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M, Family, Fuzzy Feelings, Hot Chocolate, Winter Time, but then i hopped around a bit, i love them very much?, idk i think i like it, originally the idea was only first part, this is for caskettaw2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: Lanie greets them, starting to explain exactly how the 40 something year old man had bit the bullet curled up and half frozen under a bus stop bench, and much as Kate is focusing on the victim and case at hand, a tiny, girlish part of her can’t help but perk up. Cant help but think of Castle’s lips pressing in the same spot hers was every time she took a sip.
Relationships: Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Caskett Appreciation Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989895
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: Caskett Appreciation Week 2020





	i believe in miracles, since you came along

**Author's Note:**

> for caskett week, scream  
> the prompt is:
> 
> oct 28 ❥ (fanfic) - set in your favorite season of the year
> 
> title is from "you sexy thing" by hot chocolate because this came from winter but turned into caskett + hot chocolate, a three piece, if we're all being honest.

She only just took him back a week ago.

Maybe two.

Winter in New York is no joke, never has been, and Kate’s breath puffs out in front of her in frosted crystal too small for her to see. The red and blue lights of the various cop cars play against a coating of snow still fresh enough to be caught in small, melting clumps on her caramel knee high boots. She’s still not completely used to the mullet look she’s trying out - the curled ends of her hair brush against her thick navy scarf, and her bangs catch against her eyes. She would brush them away, but honestly? That’s a lot of work. And Kate feels a lot warmer with her hands stuffed deep into her coat pockets.

(She’s waiting, and she’ll pretend she isn’t to anyone who’s watching.

But she is.)

Only a moment or two passes before Kate sees him, and she pushes off the cold car window she’d been leaning against, schooling her face from the smile that wanted to pop up the moment she saw him, that unwillingly encouraging thing that honestly, she couldn’t afford to give him. Whether or not there was a _when_ she’d be ready to completely let it free when she was with him?

Well, they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I’m late!” Castle’s huffing a little, his thick fringe bobbing up and down when he weaves his way through the NYPD brigade. She’s only a couple of steps away from the yellow tape and watching him continuously dodge people and apologize is more amusing that it has any right to be. That is, until he slips on a patch of ice and one of the coffee cups she had been _waiting_ for goes flying. 

Kate raises a brow. “It’s a little early for ice skating, don’t you think, Castle?” Early is putting it mildly. It’s half past two AM. She tries to keep the woeful note out of her tone, because honestly, she is kind of grieving the cup whose precious life giving liquid is now soaking into the street, close to a curiously sniffing police dog. 

“I don’t know how you _never_ make a wrong step in three inch heels, Beckett, and maybe I was planning on that. Did that ever occur to you?”

“You meant to lose my coffee?”

He sighs, finally next to her, and gives her a vastly aggrieved look. “It’s clearly all part of the grand plan to keep working myself back into your good graces.” Castle offers her his cup with a little apologetic smile that has no right being as sweet as it is. “Take mine instead? I was only a couple of sips in anyway.”

Kate regards him for a moment, then plucks it from her grasp and places it to her lips. She’s only just barely begun to taste it when his too blue eyed get big and he waves his hands around comically. “Oh, hell, yeah that’s not my regular order.”

It is most certainly _not._ The chocolate hint that usually lurked in his black coffee, two shots of creamer and mocha, is overwhelming today. Overwhelming enough that it’s basically hot chocolate. In fact, maybe it was just that.

"Is this hot chocolate, Castle?”

He shrugs a bit helplessly, pleading again in the space of five minutes, a near record for him. The author is still stumbling a bit on finding his footing with her, a path made bumpier by his invasion into the most private part of her soul. It still didn’t quite sit on her shoulders, that knowledge that they shared of her mother's murder. Of the implications that swirled from that one experts analysis, of the evidence that she still lacked in so many waves. That even though Castle had apologized, he had gone plainly against her wishes, and while Kate was growing not to mind as much when he did it on the regular she thought they’d established that there were some things, you don’t fudge the rules on. Some things, you let alone.

Sometimes Kate finds herself wondering if he’ll ever learn that particular lesson, and how she would deal with that particular part of him.

“It’s December _1st,_ Beckett.” Castle explains, a little bit of a complaint in his tone mixed with the apology. “Plus, I’ve been writing for six hours straight, and I didn’t think I should drink another coffee so soon. I was going to try and wait until after we got to the precinct.”

Kate takes another sip. It’s not bad hot chocolate, even if it’s a little more dark chocolate than she likes. “You’ll make it up to me at the precinct?” His form of payment would be one of his perfectly made coffees, but neither of them need to specify that. They both know.

Castle, despite having only been a Catholic School boy for a couple of years before yet another epic prank had the middle schooler kicked out, crosses himself flawlessly. “Swear to God.” 

“Mmm.” Still looking at him through the corner of her eye she readjusts her grasp and beelines for the yellow tape, not waiting for him to catch up, knowing he would scramble and then fall in perfect step like he always did. “Keep up, Castle.”

Lanie greets them, starting to explain exactly how the 40 something year old man had bit the bullet curled up and half frozen under a bus stop bench, and much as Kate is focusing on the victim and case at hand, a tiny, girlish part of her can’t help but perk up. Cant help but think of Castle’s lips pressing in the same spot hers was every time she took a sip. 

(It gets monumentally harder to keep the little smile under control when it wants to peek out after every mouthful.)

* * *

Spending the day after Christmas at the basically empty precinct was a bad idea, but Kate had seen plenty of them in her day and would for plenty more with Castle as her partner.

The memories of being cuffed to said partner still lurk in her head, smoky images of how solid and warm he’d been under her hand when she’d first woken up, of how good and good and _good_ he smelled. Especially considering the holidays - he absolutely lit up during this time of year, shining too bright for New York’s dirty slush and freezing temperatures to ever dim. A year ago, she would tell herself that it was only half as adorable as she truly thought it was when he got emotional spinning tales of Alexis’s early Christmases, spurred from them simply walking past a toystore on their way back to the car, or only half as charming when he stroked his non existent beard three times more often and dropped a fifty dollar bill in every holiday charity donation box they happened across. 

Now, though, there is a little bruise in the center of her heart and trust that hadn’t been there before she’d been centered in red lasered sights, and this is a joy she is too tired to deny herself. Kate doesn’t try and hide the fact that she’s taking a picture of him posing like a dork in front of a giant Santa Hat made out of fake presents in a hotel lobby, and only gives him a little bit of a hard time for messing up the lyrics to _Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer_ playing at the department store a victim used to work at.

(That last one, she’s still rather suspicious about. The song was way too much up Castle’s alley to mix up ‘black’ with ‘crack’. It also, unfortunately, showcased just how shockingly good his singing voice is and Kate is entirely unprepared for how much sexier it makes him.

It leads to an animated discussion on what exactly the line _and plays with elves_ means, so Kate lets it go.

But she is a detective.

And so she’s still suspicious.)

Kate feels terrible about dragging him out so soon after his favorite day of the year (if you don’t include his birthday or Alexis’s, or a dozen other days that he comes up with whenever challenged), but he speed read better than anyone in the entire precinct, and if she was going to get through the stack of journals before New Years Eve, she needed his help. 

Or she _had_ needed his help, because it’s ten thirty pm and the journals have been pushed to the side. A pizza box is stuffed into the trash can in the hall around the corner, and Esposito’s set up a little row of travel sized alcohol bottles. There’s a Huge Whopping Thermos on the table too, and three mugs with the 12th Precinct logo on them. It’s just the three of them - her, Castle, and Esposito, with a desk cop on the other end of the bullpen completing some paperwork. Gates isn’t supposed to be back until the next day, and Castle has declared that he can make a Christmas concoction better than a chocolate with nothing more than Javier’s bottles, his homemade hot chocolate, and the holiday spirit. It’s been about twenty minutes, with her and Javier as the judges, and Kate’s not quite sure he’s done it yet.

She _is_ , however, very sure that she’s drank a little more than she ever plans or likes to in the vicinity at the precinct. Blame it on the damn holiday spirit, or the emptiness of the workplace home around her, or the soft lighting from the lamps and how cute Castle was when he was utterly convinced of something, for show or for real she no longer cared. Not when her veins were running warm and all she tastes is cocoa and fire. 

Esposito excuses himself to use the bathroom, and it’s just the two of them. Castle tears his attention from the half a bottle of Jack Daniels and two splashes of Fireball just long enough to pour a generous amount of chocolate. A couple stirs with a mixer nabbed from the coffee set up as much a part of the precinct as he has become, and he’s presenting it with a flourish to her. “Okay, don’t quote me on this, but I think this ones a winner.”  
  


“Alright, Castle.” In the mood to humor him a little (a lot), she lets the full wattage of her smile slide wide and warm over her lips, lets their fingertips brush a little, such different sizes, when she takes the cup from him. Kate knows the second the mixture touches her tongue that it’s definitely _not_ the winner he spoke of, but for good measure she takes a good long drink. _They were headed home soon, right?_ Castle’s expectant gaze holds a different weight when they both allow it, when they acknowledge that he’s looking at her and it's an aside from the glances he’s been giving her for years that swirls with confessions she doesn’t have the answers to yet. Of the looks that she’s spent too much effort pretending didn’t exist, too much effort pretending they don’t mean the whole world and she depends on them more than she doesn’t.

Wiping at the back of her mouth with her hand, half a symptom of the alcohols bite and half a result of her loosened reins, Kate pulls a bit of a face at him.  
  


“Aw, damn.” Castle frowns out, looking back at the suddenly, to him, traitorous bottles. “I was positive that the cinnamon would compliment it, and the equivalent of hot chocolate and whiskey…”

“It’s better than the other ones, if that makes you feel any better.” She suggests, and he looks so dejected she wants to comfort him. So Kate does, for once, patting his knee consolingly and giving it a little squeeze. Except, after the squeeze, she doesn’t quite let go, and then suddenly her hand, is on his _knee_. It’s on his knee, and its still smaller than it, Castle always having had big, strong legs that supported a butt more shapely than it had any right to be and that Kate had snuck many a glance at over the years. She spreads her fingers for a second or two, eyes fixed on it, fighting the awareness of those deep, dark eyes on her own, and then pulls back like she’s been burned.

His face doesn’t change, a small grace he usually gives her robbed by the drink or the moment or whatever it was, all thoughtful and heated at her, but it doesn’t stop Kate from clearing her throat. From flashing him a weak smile and reaching for the thick black wool coat on the back of her chair. “Think you’re going to have to let go of this one, Castle. It’s getting kind of late.”

A moment, a flicker, and then he’s spurred into motion, furrowing his brows and making to clean up their workspace. “Yeah, yeah of course.” They pack the journals back in the evidence box and clean up with a quiet efficiency that speaks to how long they’ve truly worked together. How they let that in syncness, that unspoken thread talk for them when for whatever reason they can’t.

She blames it on the spirited hot chocolate when she asks him to walk her to her cab. She blames it on the cinnamony dark taste of the fireball when she offers to have them just share it in the holiday shortage, and she blames it on the chocolate coating her heart and tongue when she gets out of the cab first (her spot much closer to the precinct than his), and kisses him on the cheek with her head pressing uncomfortably against the cabbie’s ceiling and whispering “Merry Christmas.” even when Kate had just the day before.

The look on his face afterwards warms her on the inside long after the chocolate has faded away.

* * *

“Babe. Hey.” Kate tugs a little on Castle’s ear and then presses a kiss behind it. “I made you a drink.” She settles the black mug onto a coaster, the lights on the Christmas tree shining on them both. New Years Eve is tomorrow and the loft is blessedly silent, for once. Martha will be over bright and early tomorrow to decorate the old razzle for the cozy, familial get together they’re having the next day. It’s the first year in a long time that the Castle family hasn’t thrown a big, sparkling shindig to ring in the new year, but sometimes things change. Sort of like how Martha usually wouldn’t start preparing until noon but this time, she’ll be there as early as she can possibly can.

It probably has something to do with the reason that Castle didn’t take the still warm drink from his wife, that he was gazing with abject adoration at the bundle in his arms and focusing on not much else. Kate couldn’t blame him, or Martha either, or Alexis who really should’ve been spending more weekends closer to her law school than the loft, because Kate was just as obsessed. Just as in love. Just as shocked that she and Castle could make something so tiny and perfect.

Lily Castle is a little shy of a month old and sleeping peacefully in her dads arms. She has her daddy's dark hair and so far, her mom’s deep hazel eyes. When she wasn’t driving them crazy with crying or making messes that she weaseled her way out of with two blinks of the Castle lashes and that precious smile, Lily already reminded Kate’s dad of her when she was little. That spark in her eyes was all Castle, Kate maintained, and it was that spark in her husbands eye that had her nuzzling his cheek when she slips onto the couch right next to him. 

He easily lifts his arms a little, precious cargo not jostled in the slightest, so that Kate could dangle her legs between his and snuggle into his side, one arm looping tight around Castle’s. With the other hand she resettles the blanket on the three of them and then leans her cheek into Castle’s shoulder. A hum breaks out in Castle’s chest, a warm thing that wraps her in a feeling almost as soft as the hair on top of her daughter's head that she lightly strokes. 

Tomorrow, their home will be full of even more light and laughter. Tomorrow, Alexis will let Sarah Grace have a fashion show from her old closet, Lanie will show off the engagement ring Esposito gave her after they both gave into themselves and their real feelings, and the boys will probably end up in a spirited, somewhat competitive rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Martha will flit and swirl in the bright spot of pink and champagne that she is, Jim will coo in the softest voice Kate’s ever heard since her own childhood to his and Johanna’s granddaughter, and Nicholas Javier will absolutely steal a book from his Uncle Castle’s shelves.

The hot chocolate grows cold on the table, only a few mouthfuls taken before remembering it was lost in the love of their little family, but that’s okay. 

It couldn’t possibly be as sweet as this moment right here.


End file.
